Kabul - One NATO soldier was killed and another wounded in an explosion in southern Afghanistan, while 11 policemen and five Taliban militants were killed in separate attacks, officials said on Tuesday.

The foreign soldier died of wounds from an explosion in southern Ghazni province, NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement.

The statement did not disclose the nationalities of the soldiers, citing ISAF's policy that does not release the nationalities of the victims prior to the relevant authorities doing so.

Two NATO-led Polish soldiers were reportedly wounded in an roadside explosion in Ghazni province on Monday.

Afghan police also came under attack in Karez Bazaar area of Maiwand district of Kandahar province during a poppy eradication campaign on Monday, provincial police chief Sayed Agha Saqib said.

"The firefight lasted for hours and as a result seven policemen and five Taliban members were killed in the fighting," Saqib said, adding that two policemen and three Taliban fighters were wounded.

But Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousif Ahmadi disputed the official casualty figures in the combat in Maiwand district.

"Our mujahideen surrounded the forces for two hours and killed 25 soldiers," Ahmadi told Deutsch Presse-Agentur dpa by phone from an undisclosed location. He said two government vehicles were also destroyed in the attack.

After the record year of opium production in 2007, the Afghan government is aggressively trying to eradicate poppy fields before they are harvested in summer.

Southern Afghanistan is the largest opium-producing region in the country. The illicit drug is widely believed to have funded the six years of the Taliban's insurgency since the ousting of their regime in late 2001.

In a separate incident, two policemen were killed and six others wounded when their vehicle was blown up by a roadside bomb in Sangin district of volatile Helmand province on Monday, provincial police chief Mohammad Hussain Andewal said.

He blamed Taliban militants for the attack.

Two other troops were killed and another wounded when Taliban attacked a police post in Shindand district of western Herat province on Monday, Mohammad Raouf Ahmadi, police spokesman for the western region said.

More than 900 Afghan police troops were killed in Taliban attacks last year. (dpa)